About me
You probably didn’t miss it at this point, but my name is Menno-Paul Schreuder. At this moment you’ve made it to my ‘About me’ page, where you’ll find out more about me, what I do in life and for a living.
I live in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, I’m married to the love of my life, have three awesome young women who call me ‘dad’, am addicted to music and I love to sing as well. I’m an entrepreneur, owner of a small business called Pixels for Breakfast. I’m living the life I was given for and with the One who handed it to me; trying to be(come) the best version of myself I can be…
Some things you might (not) know about me
I grew up in the eighties (watching way too many ‘Fresh Prince‘, ‘A-Team’ and ‘Airwolf’ episodes)
I never completely surrendered my love for fighter-planes, since I’ve spent a great deal of my youth at Soesterberg AFB
I wanted to become a fighter-pilot, but I lacked the commitment at the time to ‘go the extra mile’.
I’m trying to cope with that ‘heartache’, by spinning up DCS once in a while
I went into the army for about 1,5 year, until my knee-injury prevented me from pursuing a career in the military
We have a dog, called Capo (it means ‘boss’, which he acts upon)
I love to walk the dog for about an hour every evening
My Macbook is almost always within an arms reach (ask my wife)
Love to play around with all kinds of front-end code (and some Laravel & Statamic as well)
I’m a Statamic, TailwindCSS/TailwindUI and Alpine.js enthousiast (evangelist?)
I’m intrigued by Laravel Livewire and Svelte, which I both should be looking into rather sooner than later
Some of my favorite quotes
Hard work beats talent, when talent fails to work hard
With gratitude optimism is sustainable
Meeting comes before viewpoint, question comes before conclusion and understanding comes before wanting to be understood.
About work
I started in IT and gradually gained experience with DTP and marketing activities as well. The visual aspect attracted me a lot and because of my affinity with software and technology, the final step to front-end development (and DevOps) was quite easy, as both aspects come together perfectly.
For me, ideal assignments involve Angular or Vue and lots of CSS (Tailwind). It also includes the necessary front-end challenges, such as non-standard layouts, animations, or the more "unorthodox" forms of content (think responsive and/or animated SVG). I enjoy working with designers who are looking for the limits of what is possible, and I like to help find ways to turn complex, bespoke designs into workable, applicable code.
In addition, the ideal client is a web agency or software company with one or more challenging projects and with a multi-disciplinary team of designers and developers.
I like to function as a "hybrid" between designers and developers, as I feel very comfortable making the translation between design and development and usually understand both sides well (enough) to be able to bridge any ‘gap’. For me, the focus is still on front-end development, preferably based on Angular or Vue. But during the various assignments I have done, I have also gained extensive experience with different (types of) applications and backend techniques (PHP and .NET), so I also know my way around the backend.
What characterises me as a senior developer is that I am eager to learn and curious, have a hands-on and can-do mentality and because of my extensive and broad experience I have proven to be quickly deployable. Any knowledge that I may be lacking, I try to acquire quickly and pragmatically; in this way, I have proven to be of value each time. So if you're looking for an Angular or Vue expert who knows all ins and outs of a framework, I'm probably not the developer you need. But if you're looking for a driven developer who doesn't shy away from challenges and invests time and energy in gaining the necessary knowledge, I'd be happy to have a talk over a cup of coffee.
Feel free to drop me a message down below if you’d have any questions, concerns or just want to say hi!